Kintsu Raises $4 Million Seed Funding

Kintsu, a liquid staking protocol building on the Monad blockchain, has raised $4 million in a seed funding round.

Castle Island Ventures led the round, with participation from Brevan Howard Digital, CMT Digital, Spartan Group, Breed VC, CMS Holdings, Animoca Ventures, and others, Kintsu said Thursday. Angel investors such as Alex Matthews and Ross Trachtman from Brevan Howard Digital, Marin Tvrdic from Lido, and Robinson Burkey from Wormhole Foundation also joined the round.

Kintsu initiated the fundraising for the seed round in May and closed it earlier this month, according to founder Stephen Novenstern. The round was structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) along with token warrants, Novenstern stated, declining to comment on the valuation.

What is Kintsu?

Kintsu is a liquid staking protocol founded last year by Novenstern, who previously served as the head of strategy at Pangolin, a decentralized exchange on the Avalanche blockchain. “Having run Pangolin, the decentralized exchange that brought Avalanche from zero to one, generating over $18 billion in volume with more than 3200 trading pairs, and having operated a genesis Ethereum validator node, liquid staking was right at the intersection of my interests,” Novenstern explained.

Originally, Kintsu built a liquid staking protocol for the Aleph Zero blockchain but is now focused on Monad. “In many ways, proof of stake blockchains like Monad are like digital nation states,” Novenstern stated. He emphasized that staking creates opportunity costs for DeFi, which can hinder growth at the protocol level. The liquid staking token category, particularly ‘composable’ liquid staking, presents a solution, having shown strong product-market fit across leading blockchains like Ethereum and Solana.

According to Novenstern, catalyzing Monad’s DeFi ecosystem through liquid staking presents an “enormous opportunity.” Monad is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible Layer 1 blockchain that has generated significant anticipation. Monad Labs, the blockchain’s creator, is backed by prominent firms including Paradigm, Electric Capital, and Coinbase Ventures. In April, Monad Labs raised $225 million, reportedly valuing the firm at $3 billion. Kintsu believes Monad will be the next multibillion-dollar general-purpose blockchain with various use cases.

Kintsu Launch Timeline

Kintsu’s sMONAD liquid staking token is set to launch in the first week following Monad’s official launch. The Monad mainnet is expected to debut later this year, and Novenstern predicts it “would change web3 forever with its parallelized 100% bytecode compatible EVM, async execution, and the custom MonadDB state database.”

When asked whether Kintsu will launch its own token, Novenstern mentioned that the decision will rest with the Monad-native DAO. “Building upon the foundational success of giants like Lido and Jito, Kintsu adopts best practices from multi-billion dollar TVL protocols while promoting DAO participation,” he added.

Currently, Kintsu employs about a dozen people, with plans for future hiring.

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